As in many other industries, establishments in the financial, healthcare, public and retail sectors must provide a widening range of services to an ever-growing number of clients/patients in an organized and cost-effective manner in which client/patient flow is improved and efficiency is maximized.
Most establishments utilize a queuing system in which people waiting for a service/meeting stand in one or more lines awaiting their turn to be served/seen. Alternatively, people are placed in a queue, either by means of having their name written down on a list or by receiving a numbered ticket from a dispenser. Notification of when a person has reached the front of the queue is effected largely by means of one or more continuously updated visual displays that are placed in a waiting room/area at convenient locations so that waiting people can consult the display from time to time to gather the necessary information concerning when it is their turn to be served/seen and/or by means of audio announcements.
These presently used notification systems, although generally satisfactory, are, under certain circumstances, somewhat unreliable since they rely on people inspecting/listening to the displayed/announced information at frequent intervals.
Furthermore, waiting rooms/areas, where people can sit or stand until it is their turn to be served/seen may become overcrowded and/or noisy, which may encourage people to wait outside the waiting room/area in another part of the building or outside the building. A burden is then placed on waiting people to periodically enter the waiting room/area to check their place in queue so as not to risk missing their turn to be served/seen.
UK patent application no. GB 2 357 393 concerns an information transmission system, that is particularly suitable for providing flight departure information to airport passengers via SMS messages transmitted to mobile phone receivers owned by or loaned to passengers. SMS messages are namely generated and transmitted to the mobile phones of airport passengers to notify them of check-in times, flight data and possible delays.
A disadvantage of such a system is that it requires means to register the mobile telephone number of each airport passenger. Furthermore, if an airport passenger does not own, or is not carrying a mobile telephone, the system requires at least one person to be responsible for the distribution and subsequent retrieval of loaned mobile telephones. Substantial resources as regards hardware, software and personnel are required to handle the storage of mobile telephone numbers as well as the generation and sending of SMS messages and the distribution and subsequent retrieval of loaned mobile telephones, especially if the system is used at a busy airport through which up to one hundred thousand airport passengers may pass.